Tires: All Season/Winter vs. Summer/Winter

[Chris G]

Waiting on my Taycan CT4 to arrive in February. I am mulling tires. Right now it is spec'd with 21" all-season. I live in Boston and drive to Maine/Acadia area, where I have a summer place, often ... in both the summer and winter. The odds are I will not be heading up to Maine the remainder of this winter. So far, winter has been very uneventful in Boston. The car will be kept year round in a large heated public parking garage.

Here are my options, as I see it:

1. use all season 21" for 7-8 months and get a second set of winter tires for the remaining months (November 15-March 30)

or

2. switch out the all season for summer and get a second set of winter tires - thus a set of summer and winter tires. No all season tires.

I am wondering if the picking summer over all season is the wise choice.

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[KensingtonPark]

If you are going to assume the burden of switching to winter tires, I cannot imagine a reason to use all-season tires for any part of the cycle.

 

[TaycanCook]

Except that you already have all seasons speced. So, use them up and then move to a summer when it's gone. Get a set of winters if you're going out in snow/ice.

 

[Chris G]

Except that you already have all seasons speced. So, use them up and then move to a summer when it's gone. Get a set of winters if you're going out in snow/ice.

Yes. I've asked the dealer if they will switch out all seasons for summers. Waiting for a response.

 

[KensingtonPark]

Yes. I've asked the dealer if they will switch out all seasons for summers. Waiting for a response.

Agreed that if you cannot change, just keep. We did that with my daughter's car. Tires last a long time when you switch them out like this, so you'll be waiting a few years at least.

 

[blame.latitude]

all seasons will perform better in rain, even when warm out, and have better treadlife. However they arent as sticky in high performance scenarios. It really depends what means more to you. I specc'd all seasons because where I live, even in summer, I can expect extremely heavy rain.

 

[Chris G]

all seasons will perform better in rain, even when warm out, and have better treadlife. However they arent as sticky in high performance scenarios. It really depends what means more to you. I specc'd all seasons because where I live, even in summer, I can expect extremely heavy rain.

Yes, I am not that concerned about high performance summer scenarios. Weather in the Northeast can get cold and rainy at any time of the year so perhaps the all seasons will be an acceptable choice. I may just use these all seasons for the first bit and see how they perform in the winter here in the Boston area. I can always add the winter tires for next winter. I'll only have about six weeks of winter left (hopefully) when I get the car mid February.

Talking this through has been helpful.

 

[Andy0565]

I got myself a second set of wheels to for summer/winter. Changes the appearance quite a bit.

 

[SergeyIndy]

I am facing the same decision and still can change the build as I just got the allocation.

- I use dedicated wheel/tire winter summer sets on the Cayenne and Macan both Turbo trims. You get the best of both at the cost of a winter set and hassle of going through the swap although I time my swaps to annual maintenance so net hassle is actually zero. However, the challenge is when the weather is too cold for the summers and too warm for the winters during sudden changes.

- My rationale for the Taycan after reading that summers are very hard and noisy (such as Pirelli EV specific type) so I am going with All Seasons thinking they will be softer, not as noisy, and certainly will last longer and cornering (not on track but on round abouts) will be similar since I do have PDCC, and can use one of the SUVs if weather calls for it.

 

[kmcdonal]

If you are going to assume the burden of switching to winter tires, I cannot imagine a reason to use all-season tires for any part of the cycle.

I use all seasons and winter tires, no summer tires. Our weather is very unpredictable and while rare, it can snow in the summer.

 

[Jonathan S.]

Yes, I am not that concerned about high performance summer scenarios. Weather in the Northeast can get cold and rainy at any time of the year so perhaps the all seasons will be an acceptable choice. I may just use these all seasons for the first bit and see how they perform in the winter here in the Boston area. I can always add the winter tires for next winter. I'll only have about six weeks of winter left (hopefully) when I get the car mid February.

Talking this through has been helpful.

That's always been my thinking too here in New England: even when we don't have much snow, we have plenty of temperature swings in the early morning and late at night that limit summer tires to literally only the summer months. The advantages of running summer tires in the summer would seem to be more than offset by having to run winter tires -- with their worse performance in the wet (although that's mitigated significantly by Central European / Performance winter tires, as opposed to Nordic / Studless winter tires) -- for about six more months out of the year than if running all-season tires instead of summer tires.
(I suppose ideally you could run summer tires in the summer, all-season tires in the fall and spring, and winter tires in the winter ....)

Also curious which dealer you used for your CT4?
(I'm 2 hrs west of you and have been looking into CT4 allocation wait lists.)

 

[Chris G]

That's always been my thinking too here in New England: even when we don't have much snow, we have plenty of temperature swings in the early morning and late at night that limit summer tires to literally only the summer months. The advantages of running summer tires in the summer would seem to be more than offset by having to run winter tires -- with their worse performance in the wet (although that's mitigated significantly by Central European / Performance winter tires, as opposed to Nordic / Studless winter tires) -- for about six more months out of the year than if running all-season tires instead of summer tires.
(I suppose ideally you could run summer tires in the summer, all-season tires in the fall and spring, and winter tires in the winter ....)

Also curious which dealer you used for your CT4?
(I'm 2 hrs west of you and have been looking into CT4 allocation wait lists.)

Porsche Westwood ... they had a chalk CT4 that I was sold right after I test drove it and the SA then called me that they had a CT4 on order, fortuntately with a fantastic spec.

 

[daveo4EV]

Waiting on my Taycan CT4 to arrive in February. I am mulling tires. Right now it is spec'd with 21" all-season. I live in Boston and drive to Maine/Acadia area, where I have a summer place, often ... in both the summer and winter. The odds are I will not be heading up to Maine the remainder of this winter. So far, winter has been very uneventful in Boston. The car will be kept year round in a large heated public parking garage.

Here are my options, as I see it:

1. use all season 21" for 7-8 months and get a second set of winter tires for the remaining months (November 15-March 30)

or

2. switch out the all season for summer and get a second set of winter tires - thus a set of summer and winter tires. No all season tires.

I am wondering if the picking summer over all season is the wise choice.

unlike ICE vehicle's range is deeply affected by tire choice.

my personal opinion - I have 30,000 miles on my July 2020 Taycan Turbo - I've had 3 sets of tires:

• OEM Continental all seasons <--- original
• Porsche Dealer Goodyears (summer) <--- replacements
• OEM Continental all seasons <-- current set of tires.

the summer "grippy" tires lowered my range on my Taycan - and I find the decernible grip to be useless for street driving vs. the all seasons.

I've made the personal choice to run all seasons in order to optimize for range vs. incremental grip at the limits - which I never need during any viable/legal street driving scenario.

for me personally I'm sticking with all seasons and if I had to switch between two sets of tires it would be "winter tires" and then "all season" tires…based on experience.

honestly it's such a big heavy car with soooo much power/torque I'm not sure where the incremental grip of summer tires is really really a factor off track - and even on track @ Laguna I failed to see any major behavioral difference between the all seasons and goodyears…

unless you're tracking your Taycan I honestly can't see why you'd run the summer-grippy tires vs. high quality all seasons.

 

[whitex]

all seasons will perform better in rain, even when warm out, and have better treadlife. However they arent as sticky in high performance scenarios. It really depends what means more to you. I specc'd all seasons because where I live, even in summer, I can expect extremely heavy rain.

Do you have any data showing that summer tires in a summer (warm) rain perform worse than all season tires?

 

[blame.latitude]

Do you have any data showing that summer tires in a summer (warm) rain perform worse than all season tires?

Fair question! I realize I really just made a statement there without any kind of reasoning to why that would be the case. The reason comes down to the tread pattern. The technical term is tire siping, which is really a fancy word for the cuts and patterns in the tire. All other things being equal, (size, materials, etc) a tire with more cuts across the tread design can evacuate more water from underneath itself when it enters a puddle. This is how a tire prevents hydroplaning. Hydroplaning occurs when there is more water under the tire than the tire can handle, causing the tire to float above the water and lose contact with the ground.

Take a look at these sample treads here:

A summer tire has very few cuts across the tread design. This is to maximize rubber to road contact in performance scenarios (like doing a vegas to red rocks canyon run) where the all season tire has a more heavily cut pattern. This results in a more 'squishy' feeling tire but is much better at removing water. You can also see that winter tires take this even further. Not pictured, off road/all terrain tires take this to an even further extreme, leaving big fat gaps between the road contact points of the tire.

Specific to the taycan, let's look at the stock tire options. You can see the siping gets more extreme the more 'wintery' the tire gets.

This is the pattern of the continental summer tires (PremiumContact6)

and this is the stock all seasons (ProContact RX)

And here are the stock winter tires ( WinterContact TS )